Judaeo-Christian oracles, which were probably gathered together by some
unknown editor in the seventh century. Originally there were fourteen
books of unequal antiquity and value, but some of them have been lost.
Cardinal Angelo Mai discovered in the Ambrosian Library at Milan a
manuscript which contained the eleventh book entire, besides a portion
of the sixth and eighth books; and a few years later, among the secret
stores of the Vatican Library, he found two other manuscripts which
contained entire the last four books of the collection. These were
published in Rome in 1828. The best edition of all the extant books is
that which M. Alexandre issued in Paris, under the name of _Oracula
Sibyllina_. This editor exaggerates the extent of the Christian
element in the Sibylline prophecies; but his dissertation on the
origin and value of the several portions of the books is exceedingly
interesting. The oldest book is undoubtedly the third, part of which
is preserved in the writings of Theophilus of Antioch, and originally
consisted of one thousand verses, most of which we possess. It was
probably composed at the beginning of the Maccabean period, about 146
B.C., when Ptolemy VII. (Physcon) had become king of Egypt, and the
bitter enemy of the Jews in Alexandria, and when the Jewish nation in
Palestine had been rejoicing in their independence, through the
overthrow of the empire of the Seleucidae by the usurper Tryphon. The
fourth book was written soon after the eruption of Vesuvius in the
year of our era 79, and is a most interesting record of Jewish
Essenism. It contains the first anticipation of the return of Nero,
but in a Jewish form, without Nero's death and resuscitation. The last
of the Sibylline books seems to have been written about the beginning
of the seventh century, and was directed against the new creed of
Islam, which had suddenly sprung up, and in its fierce fanaticism was
carrying everything before it. In this apocalyptic literature--the
last growth of Judaism--the voice of paganism itself was employed to
witness for the supremacy of the Jewish religion. It embraces all
history in one great theocratic view, and completes the picture of the
Jewish triumph by the prophecy of a great Deliverer, who shall
establish the Jewish law as the rule of the whole earth, and shall
destroy with a fiery flood all that is corrupt and perishable. In
these respects the Jewish Sibylline oracles have an interesting
connection w